‘Costly and cruel’: NGOs condemn EU’s new legislation on migration

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The new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will exacerbate existing problems in Europe’s handling of illegal immigration instead of fixing them, according to a group of “concerned human rights defenders.”

Dozens of human and migrant rights NGOs have signed a letter addressed to the European Commission, the EU Council, the EU Parliament and the Spanish presidency which expressed their concerns over the new legislation, saying that it “will mirror the failed approaches of the past and worsen their consequences.”

The European Union’s new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, a set of five interlinked pieces of legislation which promises to reform the bloc’s migration policy, has reached its final stretch. The pact, which was first presented in September 2020 by the European Commission, aims to establish consistent rules for all member states and coordinated responses to cope with the arrival of asylum seekers.

The most controversial piece of the new proposed legislation is the Crisis Regulation, which outlines exceptional rules which will only apply if a member state is under massive migratory pressure. In this case, the legislation will allow said member states to apply tougher measures, including extending the detention period of rejected applicants from 12 to 20 weeks.

According to human and migrant rights advocates, the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, if adopted in its current format, will result in “an ill-functioning, costly and cruel system that falls apart on implementation and leaves critical issues unaddressed.”

The NGOs – which include Amnesty International, Save the Children, ActionAid International and European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (ELDH) among many others – said that the new legislation will “normalise the arbitrary use of immigration detention, including for children and families, increase racial profiling, use ‘crisis’ procedures to enable pushbacks, and return individuals to so-called ‘safe third countries’ where they are at risk of violence, torture, and arbitrary imprisonment.”

Some EU member countries have already been accused of both illegal pushbacks, as in the case of Greece, as well as trying to return individuals to so-called ‘safe third countries’ which are, in fact, not safe at all, as in the case of Italy.

According to the letter penned by the NGOs, the approach taken by the EU to fight illegal immigration “betrays the spirit of existing EU work” by focusing on building walls rather than figuring out solutions to receive and welcome migrants.

“Rather than channelling funding towards more camps, walls, and surveillance, resources should go towards providing effective solutions, based on protection and assistance, of the kind offered to people fleeing Ukraine,” reads the letter. “Europe’s solidarity and commitment to human rights cannot be defined by place of origin, race, ethnicity, or immigration status.”

“We should strengthen, not weaken, our reception and asylum systems and provide mechanisms to fairly share responsibility between European states,” it continues. The letter warns that, while the final decision on the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum might be political, human rights cannot be compromised. “When they are weakened, there are consequences for all of us,” the NGOs write.